278. Led Zeppelin, "Houses of the Holy"

I tend to think of this as Zeppelin's hippie album, even though there's only one track that's really a hippie song ("Over the Hills and Far Away").  It's just kind of looser and less ponderous than the first four Zeppelin albums, which were either crunchy blues-rock or weirdo mushroom mysticism.  

This one sounds like they just all got together and said "fuck it, let's do a little bit of everything."  So we've got "The Crunge," an obvious James Brown tribute, with a drum part John Bonham wrote to intentionally be impossible to dance to.  (More on Bonham later).  Zep's stab at reggae, "D'yer Mak'er."  "No Quarter," a long jam of a song with John Paul Jones' mellotron and synth work throughout.  That song is kinda boring, actually, but I bet it's awesome if you're stoned on shitty ditch weed in your best friend's older brother's basement room and looking at a black light poster of a cougar.  I think I like "Dancing Days" best, with its proto-Zeppelin riff and its gently descending chorus.  

Every time I listen to that song, and this album in general (and, to be clear, I hadn't listened to this album all the way through since high school most likely), I'm struck by John Bonham's drumming.  I know it's not a groundbreaking observation to say he's a great drummer, but I really noticed how he just seems to come up with the perfect fills for each part of the song.  He's not overpowering but then you hear something and you're like "oh yeah, that's perfect there."  That's a good drummer.

A bit about the fascinating cover: it's a pair of siblings, Stefan and Samantha Gates, photographed at Giants Causeway over the course of 10 days.  It was shot in black and white and the purple tinge was originally a mistake that everyone liked so mucy they kept it.  I remember it being lowkey scandalous in grade school when I first encountered the album.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? It's one of the better Zeppelin albums, so pretty easy call.